Sell Books Blog

As I’ve said before, finding books to build and maintain your inventory is one of the most important keys to being successful at selling used books online. Finding books is getting more and more competitive every day. The pressure to get to the books first, combined with people’s desire to make money has led some booksellers into some ethically gray areas.

Let me just start out by saying that I am in no way condoning, endorsing or recommending any of the methods I’m going to be talking about. That being said, I have also heard some fairly convincing arguments from those who contend that using, shall we say, “unconventional” methods is actually justified in many ways.

In any case, you don’t have to go any further than your local thrift store to see what I’m talking about. It’s not uncommon for booksellers to engage in pay-offs, $20 “tips”, even bringing around donuts or food, anything to ingratiate themselves and allow them to get first crack at incoming books.

But granddaddy of these ethically questionable methods involves our old friend the library sale.

As I mentioned in a previous post, library sales (sometimes called Friends of Library sales) are a great source for finding used books to sell online. I also briefly touched on the practice of booksellers “volunteering” at library sales.

This is exactly the practice that raises what I think is the most interesting philosophical question of bookselling:

Is it ethical for booksellers to “volunteer” at library sales in order to increase their own profits?

You may notice that I’m repeatedly putting the word “volunteer” in quotations. Before we go any further, let’s take a quick look at the definition of the word “volunteer”.

Volunteer:
vol·un·teer
Pronunciation: \ˌvä-lən-ˈtir\
Function: noun
Etymology: obsolete French voluntaire (now volontaire), from voluntaire, adjective, voluntary, from Old French, from Latin voluntarius
Date: circa 1600

1: a person who voluntarily undertakes or expresses a willingness to undertake a service: as
a: one who enters into military service voluntarily
b: (1): one who renders a service or takes part in a transaction while having no legal concern or interest (2): one who receives a conveyance or transfer of property without giving valuable consideration
2: a volunteer plant
3: capitalized [Volunteers of America] : a member of a quasi-military religious and philanthropic organization founded in 1896 by Commander and Mrs. Ballington Booth

- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

If we sift through the portions about joining the military, plants and religious organizations, the part that’s relevant to what we’re talking about is that one that reads: “one who renders a service or takes part in a transaction while having no legal concern or interest”. Of course, any bookseller who renders their services to a library sale has a very real financial concern and interest, which is why I hesitate to call them volunteers at all.

It usually works like this: If I’m a bookseller who wants to get first crack at library sale books, so I volunteer to work the sale. I get to go through the books before the general public and buy whatever books I want. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that most libraries know this goes on and don’t think anything of it. They just consider it a perk that goes comes with volunteering, and if I as a “volunteer”/bookseller happen to be able to make money off the books I get, well, good for me.

It sounds ethically questionable at best, but there’s also a way to look at it as a win-win. The library gets free labor to help sell books and raise funds, and the bookseller gets to make some money on the side.

A more recent wrinkle is that some of the more savvy libraries are hiring booksellers to sell their books online on behalf of the library. For their trouble, the booksellers of course get a percentage of the sales. Again, the bookseller is making money through what is supposedly a purely charitable fundraiser. On the other hand, the expertise of the bookseller allows the library to maximize their profits, getting much more for their books than they would be able to otherwise. Libraries and library societies tend to be lovers of books, but not necessarily experts on book pricing. Without the help of the booksellers they probably wouldn’t know, in monetary terms anyway, what they had.

It’s a tricky subject. Arguments can really be made for or against it. What do you think? Is the practice of “volunteering” at library sales ethical if it’s done to fatten your own wallet?